[Peter Attia] How to train your cardiovascular fitness

If you're really committed to developing your cardiorespiratory fitness, you know, I think I talked about this on one of the podcasts. Maybe it was on Tim's podcast. You're trying to maximize the area of a triangle. Right? So the triangle has a base, and the triangle has a peak. And the goal is how big an area can I get, not how wide, not how tall? You don't want one that's this wide and this tall, and you don't want one that's this tall and this wide. You want the max. The base is your zone 2. The peak is your VO 2 max.

From a training perspective, the rule of thumb that is applicable for people like us, I. E. Normal people and the best athletes in the world is roughly 80 20. 80% of your volume is down here. 20% of your volume up here. In fact, some of the really, really elites are probably closer to 90 10.

So you're saying no matter if you're just an ordinary athlete or you're the best of the best, it's still roughly the same?

Tadeep Bogacchar, who's the greatest cyclist on this planet, 2 time winner of the Tour de France, you know, absolutely mopping up the field of cyclists like their children. That guy is doing 80 to 90% of his training at zone 2. And I know that for a red fact because we know who his coach is.

So so then let's maybe talk about that pyramid. So maybe let's just step back and say

I didn't answer your question, by the way, about VO 2 max, which we can come to.

But Yeah. So maybe I was just gonna say, maybe let's just cover the whole pyramid. So what's the training of the whole pyramid? If you know it's kinda 80%, 20%, let's break out

the whole course. Start with how much time am I willing to put into this. Now I gotta be honest with you. I wish I could be putting 10 hours a week into cardio. I do. I mean, historically, I've put in 14 to 20 hours a week into cardio up until 10 years ago. So, like, I really miss those days. I miss being insanely fit.

You know, I miss I I I'd miss that terribly, and I miss I miss the joy of that much training. It's simply not possible today. I you know, for all of the obligations that I have, and there's I've done the math 10 ways to Sunday. I'd have to give up something I'm not willing to give up. I give up archery or give up driving or give up my kids or something like that. I'm just I'm not willing to give any of these things up. So, yeah, I basically start with what's the most amount of time I can put into dedicated cardio. And for me, it's like 4 to 5 hours a week, not including rocking.

I sort of keep that in its own bucket. So then it's a very simple calculation. 80% of that time is zone 2, and 20% of that time is VO 2 max.

And how are you breaking out let's just start with zone 2. How many

I divide it into 4 workouts a week. So 4 Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday.

And do you always recommend doing it over like, let's say you could do 4 hours in one day. Is there the same benefit of doing all your zone 2 in one day versus spreading it out?

No. I think you know, I've talked about this with Inigo. His view is if you can get at least 30 to 45 minutes, you should spread them out. So, again, if you're only able to commit an hour to it, it might be 1 hour once or 30 minutes twice. But I'm sort of doing 45 to 45 minutes to 60 minutes each time is what I do.

And are you doing zone 2 VO 2 max on the same day?

One of those days. So so Tuesday, Thursday is just zone 2, and then 2 long sessions of stability training. So it's, like, call it an hour of zone 2, an hour of stability. Actually, why don't I just walk you through the whole week? That'll be easier. So Monday is just strength training. So that's about 90 minutes to 2 hours when you include the stability training that I do as well. So movement prep stability training, strength training, and that's all lower body. That's Monday.

Tuesday is zone 2 followed by dedicated hour of stability. Wednesday is, upper body strength and stability. Again, 90 minutes to 2 hours. Thursday is a repeat of Tuesday. Friday is a repeat of Monday. Saturday is zone 2 in the morning, upper body strength, repeat of Wednesday in the afternoon. Sunday is zone 2 followed by v o two max.

And will you ever do VO 2 max before you do zone 2?

I generally don't just because I like to have a lot of reps before I go for broke. So even when I was, like, a cyclist and doing 2 zone VO 2 max workouts a week, they were always preceded by a long the metric we would use, on a bike was kilojoules. So it was how many kilojoules of work would you do before you would do the super hard sets? And it had to be at least a 1000 kilojoules, which would translate to at least a 1000 calories of work.

And for zone 2, I know you said you kinda like to break it up. Is if someone is like, hey. You know, I can do 4 days a week of zone 2, but I can only do 15 minutes a day.

Would you say compress it. I would say do 2 thirties.

So so in your zone 2 sessions, you like to do at least 30?

At a minimum. Yeah.

And now when you're in those zone twos, are you like, when you hit the bike and the clock starts

I take 10 minutes. I I'm on I do it all mine on a bike, sometimes on a treadmill, but what I do is there's a, like, a a little it's a it's it's the the computer is programming to the Wahoo KICKR, which is the device I'm sitting on. So it's it's taking 10 minutes to ramp me up.

Mhmm. And maybe just walk through what modalities can people do zone 2 on, treadmill, bike?

Anything that is steady state. So, you know, swimming is a great way to do it because you can really swim in a pool at a steady state. Running is a great way to do it because you can pretty much run at a steady state. Cycling outdoors is generally hard, unless you have like, Fiesta Island was a great place to train. I used to train at Fiesta Island because for people who don't know where that is in San Diego, it's where all where the time trial bike races were, and it's just a 7 kilometer loop that you can ride on without lights or any like, there's no traffic or anything that gets in your way. But for the most part, like, I wouldn't be able to do zone 2 outside here in Austin. It's just it's too hilly, and there's too much traffic, and it it just it it's it fits and starts. I can do my VO 2 max here because I go to a hill, and that's my favorite way to do VO 2 maxes on a hill that's about a mile long and just do very hard up the hill and then easy down the hill.

But, a treadmill is another great way to do it. Just kind of a walking incline, typically. Rowing machine, if you're really a good rower, you have to be efficient enough. Most people are not efficient enough, and they just they don't have the strength. They don't have the stability to row really well for 45 minutes. Stair climber is another really good one, but, you know, it depends. Again, if you're if you're starting out, brisk walking is probably good enough too.

Yeah. And we we don't have to get into all the reasons or the benefits of zone 2 because we have so many podcasts with Inigo, San Milan people can listen to, but you kinda hinted at another thing there, which is, you know, when you start your zone 2 workouts, you'll ramp up. But, also, a lot of times, we get questions where, you know, hey. I did a 90 minute workout, and I was in zone 2 for 45 minutes of it. Is that am I good?

No. I mean, what I think what you mean in that question is, you know, like, I went out for a 3 hour bike ride today. And, when I got back, my computer told me I was in I did 40 4 minutes of zone 2. So two issues there. 1 is that's just a zone 2 based on heart rate. That's generally the worst approximation of zone 2. So zone 2 really is more based on lactate if we're gonna be purely accurate or at a minimum, RPE. But even if you posit that that 45 minutes of zone 2 from your heart rate is roughly accurate, it's not the same physiologically because usually you're passing in and out of zone 2 in that situation, and so you're not getting kind of that constant steady state churn which you're looking for.

What you're really kind of looking for is the harnessing of mitochondrial efficiency. And to do that, you just you have to be able to push oxidative phosphorylation right to its limit before you trip into glycolysis. And you're just you're at the limit of that glycolysis being the dominant energy source. Whereas if you're on that ride, you're going into and out of glycolysis constantly. So it's not that you're so much in zone 2 for 45 minutes, it's that you passed through zone 2 for a sum total of 45 minutes, which, again, that's there's still there's still value in that, but not for what we're talking about.

Yeah. And what about VO 2 max? What modalities can you do VO 2 max training on?

You know, here, I think it's I think it's probably easier in a way. Right? Because it's pretty much anything that gets your heart rate up and gets you very tired. So, you know, look, it could be a, you know, an air bike. It could be a regular bike. It could be a stationary bike, stair climber, treadmill, running outside. You know, the sky's almost the limit. You know, it's it's hard to do it on you know, it's hard it would be hard to do it. I'm trying to think.

I mean, heck, you could probably do it with something like burpees is probably pretty tough once you get into something that intense like jumping because the sweet spot for VO 2 max is kind of 3 to 8 minute intervals. So you don't wanna be doing things that are so intense that you can't do them for at least 3 minutes. And and so that's why I'd kinda hold off on that stuff. I mean, when I was young and I was really fit, I did I did a lot of it with jumping, but, like, those I mean, I can't jump for 3 minutes anymore. Like, I don't have it's just that that you know, I'm not that fit anymore, so I have to rely on easier things.

And so what's your what's your current VO 2 max workout? So you mentioned kind of 3 to 8 minutes on. Is it

Typically, I do 4 on, 4 off is is sort of where I spend most of my time. Sometimes 3 on, 3 off on a rowing machine. I got into that quite a bit last summer. But these days, and sometimes, by the way, I just I'm in a bit of a rush, and I'll just do 1 minute on, 2 minute off at a much higher intensity on the stair climber. So I have one of those, like, industrial grade strength climbers, and sometimes I'll just go sprint for a minute up the stairs, and then it takes me 2 minutes to get my heart rate back down to about a 100 and then repeat that for 20 to 30 minutes. So that's kind of like my poor man's cheating VO 2 max workout, but what I really like to do is 4 minute repeats. 4 minutes on, 4 minutes off.

And on the 4 minutes on, are you going a 100% for the full like, how how should someone think about

Yeah. This is one of those things you have to you have to play with this. There's a this is years years of practice to know what that feels like. So, again, I'm doing this on a bike, so I'm looking at wattage. And, my watts are so low now I'm embarrassed. So I'm not gonna tell you what the watts are because they're so much lower than they used to be. But I know I have a sense of what I need to average my wattage over those 4 minutes. So I might go out at a 105% of that wattage, and it feels pretty easy for the first minute.

If it doesn't, I've gone too hard. By 3 minutes, I'm very uncomfortable. And at a minute, I'm I mean, at with at that in that last minute, I e, at 4 minutes, I'm I don't have much left. So that's you you know, if you go out all out in that first minute, you're not gonna get to 4 minutes. You're you're just gonna crash, and you're you're sort of not in that zone. You wanna so it's not there's no question I positive split the thing, meaning I do more work in the first half than the second, but I don't want it to be more than about 10%.